Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 16th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview Main Conference Theme Author(s) Terry Cox University of Glasgow Glasgow United Kingdom Dr Sandor Gallai, Corvinus University, Budapest Title Policy actors and policy making in contemporary Hungary File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract The paper explores the ways and extent to which national policy actors play a significant role in policy making in the context of post-communist transformation. It assesses the view that post-communist national states are especially vulnerable to globalising infuences and are weak in asserting national interests in policy making. According to this view, post-communist states are dominated by elites and are weakly rooted in their societies. Furthermore, the broad political goals of the new elites have been to promote privatisation, the development of a market economy and the integration of national economies into the international (capitalist) economic order. In this context, it is often argued, governments come under strong influences of globalising and Europeanising forces and policy making reflects these influences rather than those of either state or social actors from within the national societies. The paper takes the cases of telecoms policy and pension reform in Hungary. It explores the range of influences on policy making in these areas and assesses the relative strengths of different influences. The selected policy areas provide interesting cases because of the importance of international market competitiveness and the active role of multi-national companies and international agencies in promoting new ideas, but also because they prompted a significant amount of pressure politics from different interests within the Hungarian state, the business community and wider social interests. The paper draws on interview based research in Hungary.
